Farewell Dippy the dinosaur - London museum installs whale skeleton

Instead, a huge blue whale skeleton suspended from the ceiling has taken its place.

"We also wanted to enable our global audience to explore elements of our blue whale's astonishing story via our website, without compromising the experience for either viewer".

"When the NHM's blue whale died in the C19th, there were 250,000 blue whales". In the same year, the United Kingdom brought in a law that protected them from commercial hunting, and today the population has grown to around 20,000.

It would be joined by several other new exhibits, including a giraffes, a blue marlin, a Mantellisaurus dinosaur skeleton and a meteorite that is 4.5bn-years-old.

The display cases are grouped according to the museum's core themes: origins, evolution and biodiversity.

Dippy - or more accurately a cast of the dinosaur's bones - is now due to embark of a tour of museums around Britain.

The consultancy has used a limited number of materials in the hall in order to tie all of the exhibition spaces together, and make the museum feel "coherent".

The skeleton of the blue whale - the largest creature to have ever lived - hangs between the museum's display of living species on the west side and extinct species on the east, and its position is said to symbolise humanity's responsibility towards the environment.